The Ruby Ring (26 page)

M
ARGHERITA
was sitting alone in the library, with its soaring bookcases and heavily musty smell of time and old leather. She was trying to read a copy of Ovid’s writings on love when Raphael found her. He stood for a moment watching her finger moving slowly over the words, her head bent in concentration. He was filled with a new wave of love for her, seeing the furrowing of her brow into an absolute frown of determination.

“I wonder if Nero’s Poppaea had this much difficulty!” she chuckled, glancing up and seeing him.

Raphael knelt and took up both of her hands, not responding to her query. “We must speak of a serious matter.”

“You are troubled?”

“Only by the nature of the confession now before me.”

“You feel you have made an error about this house?”

“Never that!” he smiled grimly, pressing her hands together and bringing them to his lips. “You are where you absolutely must be. No, this concerns a time before we met. A different girl. She kept my house for me on the Via dei Coronari.”

Margherita studied the expression on his face before she said, “And this girl who kept your house held some portion of your heart, as well?”

“Elena never possessed my heart. It was only an indiscretion by a lonely, overworked artist, with more lust than judgment, an act that was regretted by both of us soon afterward. So regretted and feared, in fact, that I asked her to seek employment elsewhere after I met you so that you might not discover it.”

She sank back, her lips gently parting as she closed the book and settled it onto her lap. “I see.”

“In it, I was so unspeakably selfish, Margherita. I hate even to say it for the truth there, but I fully see now that I sacrificed a young woman’s livelihood, and her virtue, so that I would not risk your ever meeting her,” he confessed, feeling like a boy suddenly in his desire for forgiveness and understanding. “And I lost Giulio over it as well.”

“Your assistant is gone from the studio when you are drowning in work? But why did you not tell me that?”

He thought for a moment. When he spoke at last, he looked at her squarely. “I was ashamed, Margherita. Giulio had befriended Elena while he was staying with me. In addition to being a brilliant artist, he is a sensitive soul, and he could not bear to see me make an honest young woman suffer like that because of my own sense of shame and regret. He said that if I insisted on turning her out, he, too, would be forced to look elsewhere for employment.”

Margherita was struck. She had known only a little of Giulio Romano, but she had seen how essential the young man was to the
mastro
’s success. “Did you truly believe I would not understand?”

“I know not what I believed.” He washed a hand heavily over his face. “Only that it has been many years since I have felt any deep emotion at all toward anyone. I was greedy with it, Margherita, like a man who has gone too long without water and then suddenly finds a fresh cool stream.” He drew in a breath. “I was so wrong. I know that now.”

“Then you must do what you can to change it.”

She spoke so simply and full of conviction that he felt cleansed by it. She was right, of course. “And the girl, Elena, you will not blame her or be disturbed by her presence?”

She reached out to caress his face. Her own expression was full of kind understanding. “Poor Raphael, caught between so many things, and so many people. Elena was someone from your past. A moment. I hope to be a lifetime,
amore mio,
” she said tenderly. “She need have no fear of me—
if
she will take
you
back, that is.”

Raphael pulled her forward and kissed her deeply. “You always make me want to be a better man.” He smiled when they parted. “I will try to find her at once, and I will do my best to apologize, whatever her response.”

“Whatever her response, it is the right thing to do.”

He smiled as he shook his head. “For a man who once believed it was the rest of the world that needed what
I
had to offer them, I am finding that I was actually in need as well. I certainly do need both of them in my life,” he confessed, kissing her again. “But my need above all others has very swiftly become
you.
”

24

E
LENA WAS SHOWN INTO THE LARGE LIBRARY ON THE
VIA
Alessandrina, with its ancient books and windows of colored leaded glass—blue, red, and green—in geometric designs. A candle chandelier hung from its center. The space was enormous, giving the impression of great power. Its large and heavy carved doors were closed behind her with a sharp and fateful click, leaving her in the shadows and sunlight that filtered through the glass. She stiffened, and forced herself to prepare for what would come next. Then she saw that it was Margherita, not Raphael, sitting before her beside the fire, in a tall chair of embossed leather with silver studs. She had faced other disappointments. Surely she could face this.

Elena was not alone in her trepidation. Everyone in the house had wondered why Margherita had insisted on speaking privately with the former house girl. Particularly Raphael, who, along with the others, was not admitted to the library when Elena arrived. After a moment, Margherita lay her book onto a small side table, stood, and advanced toward Elena, who had begun, quite noticeably, to tremble.

“You asked to see me, Signora Luti,” said Elena in a tone that came just barely above a whisper. She had wisely chosen the title for a married woman, rather than that of a young girl, out of respect.

“I did.” Margherita steepled her hands, once covered in baker’s flour, now ornamented with gold. “So then.” She exhaled, and waited for a moment. “You are Elena.”

“I am,
signora.
”

The two women faced one another directly as Magherita walked slowly into the colored light cast from the windows, the odd turn of fate obvious to both of them now. Elena born to privilege, reduced in circumstance by fate. And Margherita born into poverty, elevated now by an unlikely love.

“What is it you would want with me, may I ask, Signora Luti?” Elena haltingly asked, as frightened by the question itself as the response.

One heartbeat, then two. The small fire in the hearth crackled, then flared in the silence as each gazed upon the face of the other. “I shall be blunt. It is my wish that you accept a position as my personal attendant and companion.”

A hand splayed across Elena’s mouth, and she blurted out before she could think, “I could not!”

“Your assets are wasted in domestic chores, here or anywhere else,” Margherita calmly said, beginning to deliver the small speech she had been practicing all morning. “I know of your family and your background, Elena. But much about all of our lives has changed these past months.” She straightened the folds of her skirts and continued. “There are few I can trust in this new life. Among those few I count Giulio as a kind and honorable soul. He believed in you enough to leave Raphael over your dismissal, which is certainly a good enough indication of your character.”

“Forgive me,
signora,
but to serve
you
of all people!”

“I wish you not to serve me, Elena. Rather, I believe I would benefit from the companionship of a steady ally to help me navigate this frightening and complex world in which I find myself and which, most days, frightens me quite to death. And someone to teach me to seem like a lady when I am presented to Signor Sanzio’s friends. A circumstance I have thus far avoided, but which I must face, sooner or later.”

“But you are a lady, Signora Luti. The finest!”

“Not one like you, taught from birth.”

“It is difficult to believe that you would do this for
me,
take this chance, considering all things.”

“It is no more difficult to believe than that you would help me learn what I need to know.” Margherita smiled tentatively then. Her dark eyes were full of sincerity. “I need someone I can trust, Elena. The fact that Giulio trusts you is enough. You would begin as my lady’s maid and companion. The rest beyond that is ours to make between us for ourselves.”

“But what happened between—”

“Let us speak not of such things that cannot be changed, and which have no bearing on tomorrow. As a foolish young girl, not so very long ago, I believed it was unseemly for a woman to earn money to help her family. Knowing of you, of your determination, your spirit, and your pride, I am ashamed of that view, Elena. Ashamed when, looking at you, I see how noble a thing it can be. So rather than look to either of our pasts, let us begin a new history—if you are willing.”

Margherita then indicated a chair beside her in which she wished Elena to sit. After a moment’s hesitation, Elena sank onto the edge of the tapestry-covered chair, with its finely carved arms and legs. “So tell me then. You truly grew to womanhood in this sort of luxury?” Margherita asked her, glancing around her own magnificent library, still in awe of it.

“Indeed, it was so. And yet I have learned through my own transformation that it can all vanish as quickly as it comes. No lady must ever forget that, no matter how secure she believes herself to be.”

“I see that we have more in common than anyone else might believe.” There was another moment of silence, this one fueled by contemplation.

“Will you agree then?” Margherita finally asked, watching her.

“If you are absolutely certain it is what you wish.”

“I could not be more certain.”

Elena nodded deeply, deferring to a girl who once might well have deferred to
her.
“Then it would be my honor to serve you,
signora.
”

“It is my better hope that we shall not be mistress and servant, but rather one day that we shall become friends,” Margherita said, her words full of sincerity. “It seems I need a
true
friend above all other things if I am ever to move forward, as Signor Raphael wishes me to do.”

“H
OW CAN YOUR HEART
be so good?” Raphael asked her later. They lay together in the grand tapestry-draped poster bed, listening to a soft summer rain beyond the shuttered windows of the dark-wood bedchamber they shared.

“It is not a question of that.”

He turned onto his side, propping himself up on an elbow and looking at her amid the candle glow that flickered and danced around them. “It is to me. I am the painter, yet it is you who see clear through to
my
soul.”

She ran a hand along his jaw. “Elena is a kind and gentle girl. I did nothing you would not have done for love of me.”

“You do things every day for me, Margherita, that my mind could never have conjured.”

“Flattering words that seem most unlikely.”

“Very likely, alas,” he disagreed. “And true. Before there was you, I lived nearly every day of my life enjoying what the world, and the people in it, could do for me. Appalling as it is to admit, I came to feel entitled to that at every turn . . . and I got it nearly everywhere I looked.”

“Until a baker’s daughter on Il Gianicolo turned away from you.”

“Until that day.” He smiled. Then his face went suddenly serious. “And because of it, I wish to give you something extraordinary.”

“Speak not of that again. You have already given me the world. What more could I desire than what I have this very moment?”

“I told you that I wanted you to have something,” Raphael insisted. “The meaning of which you shall understand the moment you behold it. A thing,” he mused, “as rare and irreplaceable as you are.”

“I see you have something particular in mind,” she remarked with a little half smile.

“Oh, indeed I do,” said Raphael, never having forgotten the exquisite ruby ring, and his many cautious inquiries to Pope Leo on its behalf. Now that the pontiff was so pleased with his new Madonna, it seemed unlikely that anything—or anyone—would prevent him from possessing the ruby ring that was meant absolutely for Margherita’s hand. Not even a vindictive man like Cardinal Bibbiena.

25

September 1515

AS SUMMER TURNED TO FALL, AND ELENA DI FRANCESCO
Guazzi became Margherita’s companion, Giulio Romano and Raphael were reconciled. There was too much at stake, with all of the outstanding commissions, for them to stand on past angers. Giulio returned to the studio by day to work on the elaborate frescoes in the pope’s private dining room, and at night he returned to his suite of rooms upstairs at the house on the Via dei Coronari. While he spent most of his time with Margherita at her new house, Raphael maintained his former address out of respect for the woman he still was not free to marry.

His personal conflicts now resolved, Raphael forced himself back into a rigorous routine of work, trying to appease the various factions who had come to question his dedication. Giulio had heard a rumor that was swiftly spreading, that the pope was entertaining the idea of awarding a new and important commission to Michelangelo Buonarroti.

Not only that, but Agostino Chigi was said to want Sebastiano Luciani, of all artists, involved in ornamenting the room where the Marriage of Cupid and Psyche was nearing completion. This, after Chigi had refused him work, in favor of Raphael, for several years. The potential danger in that could not be overlooked.

A softly growing whisper of a downfall was in the air, but Raphael alone could not stop or confront it. The whispers of it were as forceful as the wind, and as impossible to contain. But in spite of the danger there, Raphael would not give up the love of his life.

Trying to stem the potentially dangerous tide, Raphael worked like a demon late into every night. Only then, his vision blurred and his painting hand aching, would he go, exhausted, hungry, and ravenous with desire, to spend a few passionate hours with Margherita. He would rise then in the early morning darkness once again to tackle, full force, the great volumes of work that awaited him.

In the months that followed Giulio Romano’s return to his life, Raphael’s production of masterpieces once again peaked, particularly in his use of Margherita as model. He sketched her first in red chalk, then painted her several times more as his Madonna. Particularly, he became intent on turning the sketch he had made that first night in her new house into a finished, richly painted Madonna. He envisioned her seated in a chair, holding Matteo Perazzi, looking directly at the beholder, as any other dedicated mother might do, in clothing that bespoke a common life, not divinity.

The portrait, done in a tondo format, painted within a circle, felt magical the moment it began to burst forth from his paintbrush. It was swiftly praised by those fortunate enough to view it. But, amid all of the Vatican work, the Chigi fresco he was straining to complete, and the intricate and laborious designs of Saint Peter’s, the project that still obsessed him through the next autumn was to paint Margherita. This time, however, she would not be the Madonna; rather, he wished to paint her as herself, in portraiture, as he had done for Maddalena Doni. As the elegant, noble woman of calmness, dignity, and grace that she had become.

“I cannot possibly wear
that!
” she laughed incredulously, seeing the opulent gown laid out on her bed on a warm Sunday in September. With the sun through the long, half-shuttered windows, it lay there like spun gold and jewels, the sleeves thick layers of billowing snow-white silk and intricate gold thread.

“But of course you can!” Raphael smiled devotedly at her. “You must. I absolutely mean to paint you in it!”

“The world would laugh at a peasant girl dressed up as so grand a lady!”

He took her chin in his hand and leveled his eyes on her with absolute adoration. “You are a grand lady,
amore mio.
The fine lady of Raphael di Urbino.”

“Ah, the things you can almost make me believe,” she wistfully sighed.

“Believe them only because they are true—for to you, I would not speak otherwise.”

There was an easel set up in an alcove of their large bedchamber, in which he maintained a carved Venetian desk topped with art supplies, pots full of paintbrushes, ink, pens, and boxes of different colored chalk, and white lead for highlighting, so that he might sketch or paint at any hour or moment he wished. In spite of it officially being Margherita’s house, Raphael’s presence was everywhere in it. Many of his finest clothes were in her dressing chamber and his favorite wine now filled her cellar. Quick chalk sketches and various studies of Margherita, Donato, and the children lay scattered in almost every room as sources for possible future subjects.

“Signorina di Francesco Guazzi!” he called out to Elena, who seemed properly to always be lingering nearby in case she was required. She came forward from the small dressing room beside the bedchamber, now dressed much better by Margherita in a billowing gown of azure silk with fashionable sleeves slashed with gold and an azure velvet cap.

“See Signora Luti into this new gown at once,
per favore.
”

He gasped when he beheld her a few minutes later walking slowly toward him. In the last of the afternoon sunlight through the tall windows it would not have been possible to do otherwise but feel astonished. How was it, he wondered, that she always made him breathless? She always made him want—no, ache—to ravish her, and that sensation was only heightened with the days. Looking at her now, that desire was mixed with a need to paint her, to create on canvas what he saw, felt—what he ached to possess forever. Her face in that light was luminescent, her head held so high and gracefully that she looked, he thought, like one who had actually been nobly born.

With a soft grunt of intention, Raphael strode across the room, drew up a straight-backed chair, and set it near enough to the window to catch the afternoon light. First must come the sketch, the way he intended to position her, but this crystal, honeyed illumination, like liquid jewels, had already inspired him.

Raphael sat her down, moving her body, her limbs and neck, looking at each part of her with a critical painter’s eye: the tilt of her head, the placement of her arms, the exact cast of her gaze. Still, he could not take all of her in, could not process the loveliness of her for the voluminous richness of the fabric that had enveloped her. The play of light over the skin of her exposed neck and face was opalescent, shimmering.

He sank before her onto his knees, heels beneath him, a sketchpad in his hands, and a stub of blue chalk staining his fingertips in the other. Once he began, his hand moved wildly over the blank pages as his eyes went back and forth from the paper to her. In an instant, his expression grew wild, his own color heightened, and he could feel his heart hammering the rhythm of excitement against his rib cage.

Sketching a subject had never seemed erotic to him, not even the women of the bordello who had allowed themselves to be used as models for a few extra scudi. He had never had the same wild sexual urge build within him as he gripped the chalk more tightly, pressed it against the paper, moved it in a rhythm that in and of itself was arousing, as he looked at her, studied her. Re-creating her. Arousing him.

“There,
s,
like that . . . look at me now . . .
s, bene.
Your eyes must be directly upon me!”

Raphael bolted to his feet and took the light Spanish lace shawl from the back of a chair and put it over her head like a veil. She was not the Madonna to him now but secular and courtly. Serene and elegant. Sensual in the reserve that was implied. Just the thought of her warm, sweet skin beneath those layers was powerfully erotic to him now, to a point that he could not think or work but only feel the desire. He was hard, his face was flushed, the blood having rushed swiftly to every extremity he could feel. His hand felt on fire as he gripped the chalk so tightly between his fingers that it snapped in two.

He tossed the pieces onto the floor, along with the sketch, and came back up onto his knees, clutching her waist and bringing her forward. His lips moved across her skin, giving in to the warm swell of her breasts where they met the silk, the beads, and the lace at the bodice. Elena, who had come into the room behind them, saw them as they were, and silently withdrew.

Driven, Raphael pressed Margherita back onto the heavy velvet bedcovers. He did not remove the dress or the veil, but only lifted them and the chemise beneath. Then he drew down the delicate lace drawers, tossing them onto the Turkish carpet as he looked to see the beautiful triangle of downy hair, and the private place it hid, waiting there for him alone. Falling to his knees, her hips firmly in his hands, he ran his tongue slowly up her inner thigh until she gasped with guilty pleasure. As his fingers traced the path that his tongue had found, he saw the line of blue chalk from his fingers branding her bare skin in a fresh, erotic way. Even the scent of her flesh, freshly washed, sweetly musky, was a new and powerful element of this addiction.

A single drop of perspiration fell onto the chalk, then dripped in a wet blue line to the place near her navel, mingling, pooling there. Margherita glanced down, seeing it too, her lips parting at the sight. The effect of that on what remained of his reserve was lethal.

Afterward, gently stripped of the costly gown, which now lay neatly at the foot of the bed, they lay naked and drenched in their shared perspiration on the rich, smooth damask bedcover, and Margherita began very softly to laugh.

“Can this be the surprise you had in mind for that gown?”

“This was spontaneous, and a surprise even to me, I assure you.”

“It is a pity you got a streak of blue chalk on the skirts, as I fear it will be impossible now to clean.”

“Ah, but every time you wear it, I shall feel ardor rise for the memory of how it got there!”

Margherita blushed. “I cannot wear it again.”

“Wear it now,” he bid her. “Come to dinner with me.”

“And where would we dine?”

She saw the moment’s hesitation, a flash of uncertainty before he smiled at her. “I dine with Signor Chigi each Saturday, and often the Holy Father attends. From now on, I wish you to accompany me when I do.”

The expression that changed her face just then belied, she knew, only a small portion of the terror she felt. Seeing it, Raphael took her powerfully into his arms. “You need not fear any place where I am with you.”

“Even the great Raffaello cannot stop their cruel whispers and their raised eyebrows when they see your companion is a baker’s daughter.”

“Can we not stop them, the force of us, together?”

“I bid you humbly,
amore mio.
” She glanced around at the absolute splendor in which she now lived, the elegantly appointed cocoon that insulated her from the hardships of life. “Do not force me when I have faced so many new changes in my world already.”

“I ask, I shall never insist. Nothing gained from you that way would ever please me.”

“Then the answer is no. I want not fame, nor notoriety, from what we have together.”

“And what are we to do with this most opulent new gown?”

“May I not wear it only for you?”

“Tomorrow you must pose for me and,
s,
I bid you, wear it again.”

“And will it end between us as it has today?”

“Only if I am very fortunate indeed!” Raphael smiled.

M
ARGHERITA
came unexpectedly into the bedchamber, where Elena was laying out the gown and headdress her mistress was to wear first thing tomorrow to visit Padre Giacomo, and to offer what help she could to the poor of his parish. Elena jumped, and the beaded headdress clattered to the floor. But the moment she saw Margherita standing before her, her face blanched, ringing her hands, Elena’s fear dissolved. Margherita was ghostly pale, her body rigid with concern.

“You must teach me to dance!”

To Elena’s complete surprise, Margherita reached out her hand and clasped Elena’s in her own.
“Per favore,”
she said in a tone of gentle pleading that shocked Elena almost as much as it moved her. “I have avoided it for as long as I was able, but I must know enough not to make an entire fool of myself when we are guests at Signor Chigi’s coming wedding.”